voting rights

July 14, 2017 -
After the controversial commission requested voter data from all 50 states, it faced an onslaught of resistance and lawsuits. Meanwhile, rattled voters have been contacting elections officials to get their names off of the rolls.

July 14, 2017 -
A ballot initiative campaign in Florida and a lawsuit against Louisiana seek to restore voting rights to people convicted of felonies after they're released from prison. The efforts are parts of a broader movement to overturn felony disenfranchisement laws rooted in white-supremacist politics.

May 5, 2017 -
In a live broadcast from North Carolina, Facing South Publisher Chris Kromm talked with Amy Goodman about the South's growing clout in the Trump era and why the state is ground zero for battles over voting rights and democracy.

March 24, 2017 -
Florida has the harshest felon disenfranchisement law in the country, but it's now being challenged by a ballot initiative campaign led by a former felon as well as by a class-action lawsuit.

February 17, 2017 -
Georgia will have to do away with its exact-match voter registration verification scheme thanks to a lawsuit filed last year by voting rights advocacy groups. The program resulted in the disenfranchisement of some 42,000 people, disproportionately people of color — but now it's being considered by other states including Florida, Virginia and West Virginia.

February 15, 2017 -
Gerrymandering voting district lines is one way to rob political power from people of color, but another is not drawing any lines at all. A lawsuit filed last week is challenging such an at-large voting system in one Eastern North Carolina county — and history suggests the plaintiffs stand a good chance of winning.

January 5, 2017 -
As U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama prepares for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week, civil rights groups are working to block his nomination, citing his poor record on civil rights and role in targeting African-American voting rights activists.

December 16, 2016 -
As North Carolina's special legislative session on disaster relief drew to a close this week, Republican legislative leaders announced a surprise special session that ended with the state's newly elected Democratic governor stripped of key powers and dozens of protesters arrested.

December 2, 2016 -
A think tank founded and largely funded by GOP mega-donor Art Pope has jumped into the still-unsettled North Carolina gubernatorial race with a lawsuit challenging same-day registration — a program the legislature killed in 2013 but a federal court revived for this year's election.

November 30, 2016 -
Gregg Phillips of Texas, a former Republican Party official turned conservative activist, sits on the board of True the Vote, a tea party-connected poll monitoring group that peddles exaggerated claims of voter fraud while pressing for restrictive voting laws.